Thursday, December 15, 2011

Because of my resistance to change in my holiday traditions
and my husband’s instance of doing things his way; visit his family, make their
dinner, use their decoration etc etc.

I’ve jumped on this hurry up and do things my way band
wagon. I drag my tree out way before Thanksgiving, deck the halls with bows of
all things me, order Christmas cards in October, and break out my favorite
Gladys Knight Christmas album at the first sign of a Turkey sales…. Yay me!

My all-time favorite Christmas song; sung by Gladys is a must!

Or not.....not only has this become exhausting but my house looks like
a train wreck: we are drowning in Christmas clutter and the New Year cleanup
has become a daunting task.

In my haste I have really junked the place up and my OCD is in serious overdrive.

I’ve bought into the wives tale of how you spend your New
Year ’s Day is how you will spend your entire next year. This explains why I
have spent the last 20 years of my life trying to clean up and catch up.

Something has gotta give.

For my sanity sake this year I really took a step back and
reevaluated my approach.

I still started the fa la la la early but decided less is
more and my house is all the cleaner for it.

Here are a few things I’ve tweaked and am taking a
completely different approach. In short I’m de-junking for a cleaner seamless
holiday finish.

De-kid clutter, in the form of a “project wreath”

All those school crafts spread all
over the place are our number one junk culprit. Love my kids, love their work,
don’t love the rough holiday edge.

A “Project wreath” is a simple place
to display the kid’s work every year without having their master pieces take
over the house.

Crafts in waiting

We take all current works and just
hot glue or tie them to a plain wreath and hang it on the wall.

Next year we will take an out with
the old and in with the new approach by removing tattered and broken items and
replacing them with the kid’s latest and greatest master pieces.